The Art of Natural Dressage

I decided to give our current favourite exercise a bit more room . Mucki and I have found back to the Spanish Walk again. Not that it was ever really forgotten, but it stagnated a bit, until a few weeks ago, I discovered another aspect about the exercise.
To start off, I will copy a few quotes from my own diary:

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

I've also done some YouTubing to see different kinds of Spanish Walks. The most extreme I have found is this one:
Exceptional Spanish Walk
It shows a very high lifted leg, while maintaining a hindleg which steps far forward. I see it as an example of a well trained Spanish Walk regarding the two aspects that are usually focused on: high leg lift and normal length of strides.
The focus on these points is in my opinion the reason why it falls short in all aspects that are important to me: expression of pride, joy and playful ease.

While thinking about what constitutes the expression I want, I found myself thinking along the lines of what Annette posted. All of the images and videos I've seen so far of Spanish Walks with high lifted and stretched legs show horses who are heavy on the forehand. When trying to combine walking with leg lifting they all lose collection if they had any. But isn't collection needed to get the forehand light, in order to lift a leg effortless?

Next I was looking at videos of collected walk, as I suspected that it is very hard for a horse NOT to be on the forehand in walk when the other foreleg is lifted.
This video I found particularly interesting:
Frollection - free and collected walk
It's an overlay of a free walk and a collected walk, performed by Bent Branderup. It's clear to see that while the neck is more upright and the strides are shorter, there is not so much difference in terms of pelvis rotation and bending of the haunches. I guess that's not really possible in a four beat gait with no suspense phase?

My conclusions so far are that a overly high leg lift is detrimental to a free and easy walk and that the horse should be in a form of collected walk with shorter stride length than usual.

Yesterday, I asked Anna to film me while I tried different cues with Mucki. The result is funny, but not as good as I hoped. Maybe I upload it anyway... The main problem was that I concentrated so much on my own movement, that I moved all awkward in the end and Mucki was a bit lost as to how to interpret that awkwardness .
I concluded once more: the most important ingredient to the Spanish Walk is joy and/or pride. When it becomes an exercise, all the expression is lost and it looks mechanical.
The best version I got yesterday right when I took Mucki from the pasture! He was so happy to come with me, that he did a Spanish Walk all by himself - just an expression of pure joy!

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Hi Volker,
for me the straight leg has always been a puzzle.
I base my Spanish walk training on the stallion behavior of the striking forelegs. It often represents a spirited horse meeting another, or challenge/invitation to play. In those instances, the horse doesn't hold up a straight leg, instead it is truly an exaggerated stride - with the knee bent. The extension seems to come from the hoof being so high off the ground - it takes longer to plant the hoof again, so the straight leg I think is more of an illusion for us humans .

And the funny thing is that after introducing the horse to the concept of lifting one foreleg at the time - they seem to come up with the higher expression of the strides by themselves. I definitely watch my timing in a session for the SW - it's not really a "calm horse" activity. At the beginning, I will ask when the horse is most at his "stallion-like". When confirmed, I can use the SW to create a prouder, more alive horse.

I read recently a phrase that stuck with me: (I paraphrase)

"Seek the roots of the movement. The essence of it in nature, in the expression of the free horse. Then keep the feeling of the movement foremost in your mind. "

Oh, I forget how to post pictures here, I will try to look into it when I have more time.
Zu

So true. And all the more astounding that all those movements that the Classical Dressage tries to capture and recreate are originally born from showing off pride and strength in front of another contestant. How can a horse do just that when it has to obey with every step? It's like commanding a prisoner to dance and then complain that the expression lacks the joie de vivre that you wanted to see...

Yes, I think that's where I want to end up as well. Right now, I mostly concentrate on the cadence from where I think the most expression comes from. I believe that a horse can do a 'Spanish Walk' without really raising the legs more than normal at all. The rhythm of the walk alone can take up so many forms of emotional expression - and from there the rest is just an additional adornment...

BTW, I would be very interested in any picture or video you can come up with .

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Volker,
there is a term for a cadenced "not-raising the legs high Spanish walk", in your research, look for "counted walk"

pic's of the Spanish walk:

Is that so? I thought that counted walk is a slowed, diagonalised walk, meant as a precursor to piaffe?

You're pictures look interesting, but it's so hard to learn Spanish Walk from a picture - you don't happen to have that as video as well, do you?

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Hi Volker,

I thought what you were describing was the counted walk. I don't always end up with a diagonalized gait, just a very expressive majestic cadenced walk.

I will try to get a video of our version of the Spanish walk for you.

Last Sunday I tried to do Spanish Walk with both Mucki and Lily at once . Here's part of it on video.
I was walking with one horse on either side of me, cueing them like normally. Mucki's Spanish Walk is much better than Lily's, but with her this model-rival kind of learning works fantastic. She was trying so hard to keep up with Mucki and when I saw the video, I realised how they were getting more and more synchronised towards the end .
I really have to see if I can use that kind of training more in the future...

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Found another interesting puzzle piece on our way to the Spanish Walk: slope training!

I quote from my own diary:

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Last week I experimented with Spanish Walk backwards . It's basically the same principle as with the normal SW - the stepping back of the front legs is done via a pronounced leg lift.
For sake of keeping the movement natural and intuitive, I didn't bother about stretched front legs, but rather let Mucki be reminded of the leg lift when doing a School Halt. Thus the end result is more like a string of School Halts. Or a collected backward movement, with engaged hindquarters that allow for a direction change (like a leap forward) at any moment.

The main problem I encountered with SW was that the hind legs don't step under enough. That results in a leg lift that is not supported by balancing on the hindlegs, but rather leaning heavily on the grounded foreleg. By experimenting with the SW backwards, I try to solidify the notion in Mucki that a lift of the front legs is best supported by engaged hindlegs.
So far it worked nicely and we had the nice side effect, that we were able to do a beautiful Schaukel (rocking forwards and backwards) with much engagement, because Mucki never knew if I would stay with the rocking movement, or go on moving backwards or forwards.
It seemed like we discovered another piece of that 'real collection' that Mucki can do so intuitively on the pasture, but which is not so easy when doing those 'artificial' exercises with me .

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

That is interesting, I will try it...
Thanks for the inspiration.
Actually, I wouldn t have come to this idea.